Beyond the Wall. East Germany 1949-1990
Katja Hoyer, Allen Lane, £25

THE German Democratic Republic (GDR) has been a neglected subject or portrayed simply as a totalitarian country ruled by Stalinists who oppressed the population. 

Katja Hoyer, born in the GDR five years before its demise, presents a more differentiated picture. Her aim is to give a more comprehensive description of the GDR, its difficulties and achievements. The fair portrayal of the political situation at the interface with Nato and the real life experiences of GDR citizens is urgently needed for a better understanding of Germany today, and Hoyer has produced a very readable book that includes many personal stories which create a vivid picture that could help readers understand the real history.

Although more information about the GDR is very welcome, the book feels unbalanced: two overlong early sections detail years of brutal violence, first the purges under Stalin in the 1930s, and then the “invasion” of Berlin by Soviet soldiers who violate women and are described as a “drunken horde of foreign invaders.”

Furthermore, the alleged power struggle between leaders Ulbricht and Pieck are given undue prominence, whereas hardly anything is said about the nature of the new society that was being built. 

A good example would be the absence of an analysis of the different ways East and West were dealing with de-nazification as prescribed in the Potsdam Agreement. 

Hoyer seems to see denazification as an economic rather than a political question. Whilst the FRG passed a law in 1953 that allowed former Nazis to return to their positions as army officers, lawyers and teachers, the GDR removed most former Nazis from public office and therefore was obliged to train new people in these professions. This was of political importance for the society the GDR set out to build, even though, initially, it had negative economic consequences.

Also, aside from some short comments about how East Germans wanted to build a state markedly different from that of the Nazis, only after half way through the book is the reader given an inkling of what life was actually like for GDR citizens. 

Hoyer implies that the first decades were primarily about overcoming huge political and economic difficulties and that only from the 1970s onwards did the benefits of childcare provision, comprehensive education and support for recreation became freely available. Whilst life did become more prosperous, the principle of free access to education, health provision and childcare was there from the very early days.

It is disappointing that the vast majority of the personal stories Hoyer relates are negative. They convey the impression that these are typical representative stories of life in the GDR. 

And yet, there are many other potential stories about the excitement of helping to build something new, be it in industry (the battle for energy resources), agriculture (building of new agricultural structures and the sharing of technology), education (Workers’ and Peasants’ Academies) or art (bringing artists and workers together).

One of the progressive aspects that characterised the newly established GDR was its new constitution, and particularly the fact that women were guaranteed equal rights. Hoyer ignores this even though the contribution of women made a huge difference to the construction of that new society. 

She does refer to the gender equality in the 1970s (and contrasts it to the situation in the West), but ignores the fact that gender equality had been a crucial factor already in the early years of the GDR. The independence and self-confidence of GDR women was much commented on by West Germans when the Wall came down, but this had come about because of the rights that women had enjoyed for decades.

Hoyer also talks about car ownership and the difficulties of obtaining a new car, but does not mention the well-developed and subsidised public transport system. 

By leaving such facts out of her narrative the reader cannot really understand why, in 1989, many people in the GDR were looking for a reformed GDR rather than its abolition.

It is surprising that Hoyer does not mention the sanctions imposed by the West on the GDR (similar to those imposed on Cuba by the USA). 

She mentions the Hallstein doctrine but not what impact it had on the GDR economy. It created almost insurmountable difficulties in terms of the introduction of modern machinery as well as research and development. Complex initiatives had to be found to overcome some of the impact of this.

In addition, it is puzzling that Hoyer offers little space to discuss the process of change in the GDR which eventually led to reunification. In particular the blatant interference from, and then domination by the Federal Republic of Germany, which impacted decisively on the last GDR elections in 1990. 

Even more serious is the cursory description of the involvement of the “trust agency” Treuhandstalt, and the role it played in destroying the GDR’s infrastructure. 

Hoyer actually gets it wrong: the trust agency was formed in February 1990 in order to find a way to share the publicly owned property among the citizens of the GDR. After the elections, when the GDR was still a separate state, a West German businessman was made chair of the trust agency and changed its task to the privatisation of all publicly owned property, with most of those enterprises sold off for a song to West Germans. 

As Hoyer says, the GDR has been written out of the national narrative of Germany. She emphasises that it “deserves a history that … gives it its proper place in German history.”

But her blindness to the more positive aspects is a serious omission, and would have helped readers to understand better why so many in the East still treasure their past.

And there is one amusing mistake in the book: the anniversary of the GDR was October 7, not 3. October 3, now called the “Day of German Unity,” was chosen back in 1990 to obviate the commemoration of yet another anniversary of the GDR.

Blob: Bruni de la Motte is co-author of a short history of the GDR, Stasi State or Socialist Paradise?